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The NFL may be a copycat league, but it's not like the 28 teams that fell short of Conference Championship weekend can just look at the Seattle Seahawks, Los Angeles Rams, New England Patriots and Denver Broncos and say, "Oh, let's do that." After all, Mike Macdonald and Matthew Stafford and Drake Maye and the Broncos defense don't grow on trees. Still, there are lessons that we can draw from those four teams and apply to how we think about the league and each of its 32 teams. Friends of the show Nate Tice from Yahoo and Bill Barnwell from ESPN join Robert Mays to unearth those lessons on this episode of The Athletic Football Show.

0:00 Welcome to the show
3:00 Explosive plays
11:51 Tight ends
24:19 Pass rush
32:15 What other podcast is making Wu-Tang Financial jokes?
35:22 Big picture: reduce your opponent’s playbook
43:11 Special teams
49:32 Is defense back?
1:03:35 Nickelback / Nick Emmanwori
1:14:09 A new coaching tree
1:17:41 The concept of a “championship window”
1:21:30 We’re talking about the Chicago Bulls now
1:22:02 The podcast goes off the rails
1:25:37 What are we doing here?

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